Minecraft - I missed thee

Back from Christmas and back to digging around in the virtual dirt. Got to go a little nuts the last two nights playing, and I've really decided to throw a little more caution into the wind and mix it up with the baddies, finally.

On night one I really didn't know what to do, but I knew that I needed to do something a little more exciting after a found a couple diamonds. Problem with the diamonds that I found was that I only found two of them, so I really didn't know what to do with them, I ended up making a sword on day two, because I was going to kick some ass, but more on that later.

So night one, I decided that I was going to go check out what I'll call Four Points mountain. It's a collection of four mountain peaks with a giant space in the middle of it, where I decided to set up base camp, because there are a lot of natural caves around it, so for exploration it's a good location. But more on that later as that was also a night two adventure.

Avoiding anymore tangents... I set to make a tunnel from the Ick Palace towards 4 Points so that I wouldn't have to run around the side of my fort, saving me a little time. This worked out great so it led to me making another tunnel towards the West and eventually a third tunnel to the North. The whole process worked out pretty neat as I set up a whole underground passage system that would save me time and be much safer for getting to where I wanted to go. The third tunnel did connect to a natural cave that I'll need to go back and check out because it goes basically straight down, but it was getting late on night one so I let it be. I'll come back to it, but I can almost see my old buildings so I'm a little reluctant to go there, I'm looking for a newer area.

So on night two I decided to go to 4 Points and build up a little house in the middle of the mountains, really should rename the house here the Nexus because of it's proximity to so many natural caves. There is one major problem with the house though, I didn't make it far enough in the center of the clearing so I've had to deal with a couple creepers dropping in from about 1000 feet up. I think the house is safe now as I've closed off the top of it, but who knows. Anyway with my new digs I decided to go exploring and the pictures that I've attached are of a volcano type of structure that I found, it was pretty amazing looking and with a natural cave that goes down quick, so that is on the list of places to go check out.

I also did a little adventuring into a cave right next to the Nexus, it's pretty straight forward, nothing crazy in it, and tons upon tons of coal, which is a good thing. I sealed off the deeper portions so that I could mine out the coal and some iron before I went venturing deeper. When I finally did I was met with a panic attack... As soon as I cleared out a walkway into the unexplored areas I was greeted with the hsssssss of a creeper right next to me about to explode. After losing control of my mouse for a second (I always do that, that in itself will make a great let's play series) I was able to get back through the walkway quick enough that he didn't explore (thank goodness that my left hand knew where the "s" button was. Thankfully he was stuck behind a single block of dirt and couldn't get to me, a couple sword whacks later and he was dead. I went deeper to be greeted with an arrow pegging me in the head from a level below, I took more damage killing off that one skeleton that it cost me basically all of my leather armor. And it was pointless as well because where the skeleton was, there was a 3 block drop off that went in multiple directions that I wasn't prepared to go venturing through at that point. But it was the principle of killing that guy at that point.

So at the end of the night I went and armed up, because we're going back next time I get on to explore how deep that cave goes. I made a set of iron armor and a diamond sword, I'm not fucking around now. And I welcome death if it should find me, just means that we'll be building new stuff in an unexplored part of the world. Honestly I'm surprised that I've been able to last as long as I have without dieing, I think that I've been playing it too safe, so I need to bring the excitement and go find me some diamonds.

And the last picture of the ocean, who says that there aren't oceans, looks pretty far and empty to me. =)

Minecraft - No sprelunking for you!

I played a bit last night but I'm not really sure what all I did. I made a tower on the corner of my palace that was really nice, the glass floors on the overhang are now going to be standard. And with that I kind of felt like my little abode was complete on the outside. I did a little digging inside my place, got to the bedrock and then decided that I was going to start making branch mines. I was really hoping that I'd hit a natural cave system, but I didn't hit anything. And speaking of natural cave systems, I am in a region that is like devoid of them...

So after my tower construction and my mining, I decided that I'd go do a little exploring looking for a nice cave to go dive into, nothing. There literally is nothing around me for a very long way, at least that I found so far. When I went to the far North I found a very cool looking mountain structure that looked to have a couple caves in it. One of them was a bust, but I have yet to check out the other two. I'm going to need to set up a sort of base camp over there to check it out because it's too far of a walk to go back and forth on repeatedly, probably just build a house in the middle of the structure so that I don't have to run back and forth all the time.

My battlenet account got reset and rehacked. This time I recovered it with an authenticator so hopefully that will take care of the problem going forward. My brother was telling me to set up a new e-mail but honestly I just don't want to set up yet another e-mail address that I'll have to look at, I mean it's a pain in the ass. I guess if I get hacked again then I'll need to make an address just for gaming, which I'm sure will splinter into a million different accounts if I have to change any of the individual games because it got hacked. "I'm tired of running!"

Headed off for Christmas so I won't be playing anything for about a week. Hopefully by then Notch will have the beta stabilized and we can start playing on the server again. Who knows maybe this time my main machine will be able to run it.

Minecraft - Beta Prime

So it's the first night of beta and Crash didn't update the server so I did a little playing on the single player. As you can see from the pictures I went exploring and building, I kind of like my little fountain.

I started the night with the thirst for adventure and thought that it was time that I got up the balls to go clear out that cave that I had been toying with for the last couple of weeks on the SP. So I followed the pathways to the spot where I was going to need to drop down and naturally there were a couple creepers waiting there for me. They really aren't too much to deal with if you can whack them from a couple blocks above so I cleared they out and then jumped down. Instantly here came another creeper from the darkness, I drew my bow and fired into his sad face, his body falling to the floor and leaving behind a couple small piles of sulfur (not gunpowder actually) when I heard the dreaded SSSSSSSSSSSS. I spun around quickly and could only see the feet of another one trapped behind the block that I used to jump down to the level I was on, talk about luck. I sent a couple arrows into his body as well making sure that my back was clear before venturing onward.

And this is where it hit me, why there is such a thrill digging around underground. As I prepared to rush into the darkness with my torch in hand I realized how vulnerable that I really was when I rushed in to total darkness to drop a torch. If something were to jump out at me, I'd freak, lose control of my mouse and run around like a little girl not able to fend off what was coming at me. Now I have to say I'm decent at the average FPS, so this shouldn't happen with me, but it does. I freak out because I really think that I'm going to die in there when something attacks me and I'm not expecting it. So when I go spelunking there is always the feeling that something is going to come out of the darkness and I'll be completely unprepared to deal with it. I mean if I see something coming, it's not that hard to deal with, heck I even have time to pick the right weapon most of the time, but in the darkness you have to do a lot all at once. First you have to figure out what is coming for you, is it a spider, a skeleton, creeper? Depending on what it is you have to use very different tactics. Second where is it coming from? Generally you'll hear a zombie coming so they aren't a big deal, a skeleton usually will announce that they are around by whizzing an arrow past your head, a creeper, usually you don't see them until they are right in your face since they don't make noise. Third, what weapon do I need? Usually the bow is the sure fire bet, but do you really want to waste arrows on a zombie? Fourth, are there adds? Fifth, where can I move to? All of this happens in an instant and the best part is that you never know when that instant is going to come. It might never come in a dungeon, or you might get 5 or 6 instances of it all right back to back, you just don't know.

So I charged in with my torches and lit up this huge cavern of a room and proceeded into the next room, naturally a creeper was waiting for me, no problem. The next room was almost vertical, I went up a couple blocks and realized that it went to the surface so didn't really need to go all the way up. Besides I saw that a creeper was hanging out up there a couple levels above me, and as everyone knows a creeper above you is a very bad thing. So I just headed back and sealed off that part of the cave.

I had one final area that I needed to check out, I was hoping that the cave would take me down to the bedrock, but sadly this cave did not. But as I was checking out my final passage I heard an arrow twang on the ground next to me, there was a freakin skeleton in here, in an area that I thought was safe. It was that same passage way that I wrote about a couple weeks ago where a creeper and a skeleton were just hanging out. So I looked around, and there he was, a skeleton sniper sitting up on a ledge firing at me. I think their aim got worse in the beta because he wasn't too hard to pick off, then I went up to light up his little cubby hole. Dropping dirt under me to climb was a little nerve racking because what would happen if a creeper spawned up there while I was climbing up, ah the tension. Anyway I got up there, dropped a torch and saw this 3x1 spawn spot, sneaky bastards.

At this point the cave was cleared, I could have dug down and seen where else it would go, but I wasn't in the mood for digging I was in the mood for exploration. So I packed up my bags and headed off to the North looking for a large cave that I could set up shop next to. I ended up finding the mountain face that you see in the pictures above, it was just too cool to pass up. So I went to work on a new home, why? why not? This time I thought that I'd get a little more sophisticated and add a little fountain, the walls are better, and the entry gate is better as well. i even climbed up the cliff face to make my 2 high retaining wall up above me to make sure that nothing was going to come raining down on my palace. It was a thing of beauty, which I'm still planning on doing more with, and then I saw a creeper way way up high over my palace. Wanting to see if he'd die if he fell I shot an arrow up at him, honestly didn't think that I could hit him, thinking he was too high, but I hit him and he disappeared. A couple moments past and then I caught him jumping down into the water of my fountain, not dieing. I took care of him, but I'll need to fix that problem up above me to make sure I don't have to worry about that again.

From e-mails I can see that Crash is having trouble with the server, so who knows how long that could be down, either way I probably won't get to do anything until after I get back from Christmas, so no hurry from my standpoint.

Minecraft - Fun Cubed!

If someone else joined up with us I don't know what clever title that I'd come up with, but now that we have Kerg in the mix, the fun is now cubed!

I'm still fighting with my home computer to get the game to run without the "magic blocks" that disappear and reappear when trying to mine them. It's made the game unplayable on that system and I've pretty much tried everything that I can think of. So in reaction to that I'm going with plan B, I've broken out my old laptop and I've been playing in the browser. It's not ideal by any means, but it does work and it's stable as anything. I'll keep messing with the main system because it looks so much better on there, but for now I'll look at maxing out the performance on my laptop.

So last night once I got my laptop going I decided that I'd try and explore the cave that is underneath my house. As I got deeper I saw a very cool underground river that flowed deep into the cave. I followed the path to see that it met up with another river and poured down into a giant hole that I'm assuming went all the way to the bottom because I could see light coming from deep down below. However the drop off was a location of a lot of danger as well, there is a dark opening right around the corner and next to the drop off that I need to get around so that I can further explore. Problem is, is that it's spawn heaven, I counted 4 creepers, a spider, a zombie, and 2 skeletons that all tried to get around that hole to get to me. A couple of the creepers blew up next to the hole and increased the size of it, opening it all the way up, and making it that much more dangerous. The place is a serious hell hole, I'm going to want to go back and clear it out because there is iron down there, but it's going to be tough.

So in an effort to clear that place out, I decided that I would go get me some armor (not sure if it works in multiplayer yet) and get back down there. Naturally there was only like 1 cow up in the starter town so I had to go out looking to round up some cattle. As I got further away I just decided that I was going to make a little outpost in the middle of nowhere just for a change of scenery (Crash has basically built up the entire starter town) I wasn't really intending on making it a complete house, but after I started work, it turned out really cool and I spent the rest of the evening working on it. I'll get some pictures up, it has a nice outer wall with a ditch around the front and the cliff to the side of the house is dug out with a trench inside of it preventing mobs from dropping down on my head. The coolest part though is the house itself, there was this giant pillar that extended up to about the clouds but had a very small ununiformed opening at it's base that was just screaming to be built in. The natural location is just fantastic with an even more strategic location just to the side of it, with an opening right next to a waterfall and stream on the side of a small hill, which would be very easy to secure.

Not sure what I'm going to do next. I might keep building that house, might go back to clear out the other dungeon, or I might just go exploring and build another house out in the wilderness. Really it's just going to be wherever the winds take me. I do think that I should run out into the distance and make an evil looking empire with lava and obsidian, really far out there so that if the guys ever see it they will be like WTF! is this! Good times.

In the not so good times, my wow account apparently got hacked. Not that I'd really care on the wow account since I don't plan to fire WoW up again (I don't want to burn out on that style of game before TOR), but I do want to get Diablo 3 and this will just be a serious pain in my ass if I don't get it resolved. Let's see how well the legendary blizz support does for me, I don't really have high hopes.

Minecraft - We are the creators of worlds

As I was telling Crash, why build a character when you can build a world? As you can see from the pictures, we have been busy. With the lag from the server not causing as much of a problem we've been able to be a lot more productive. Crash is working on building houses and his pyramid, I took on the task of building the tower. So overall the whole mountain is getting a make over from the two of us working it both on topsoil and some digging within, it's kind of turning into our capital city.

We have both started talking about our potential next projects. I think that he is going to work on a tunnel system that will connect remote areas to our main capital, I'm thinking that I might go on a little walkabout and build some stuff out in the middle of no where, just as something to discover out in the wideness. But I also want to go looking for some diamonds and do some real dungeon exploration, with the lag I've been afraid to really mix it up, but after playing from CA, it's got to be ok now, right? So yeah I want to go find me some goodies and kill some stuff, not to mention that I want to get me some obsidian as well so that I can make portals and even maybe a black tower of death with lava pouring from it. Toss that out in the wilds and let him come across that! Another project I'm thinking of is doing a massive tower that will be gigantic. And a final idea is that we could make a bridge from out mountain to the mountain behind us, that would be way up in the air.

Overall there are lots of things to do and while I could see how it could get old, if we can get Kergin to join us then that will add just a little bit more. 3 people would make it really interesting as more projects would keep going up, and more stories and ideas.

Speaking of stories I haven't given up on the idea of doing a fraps series, I think that would be a lot of fun, those movies really bring the game to life as you watch how someone else approaches the game. Why? Because the game isn't really about skill it's just about people playing with toys and seeing what happens, the actions are similar, but the reactions that different people have is unique, think of all of those 2 girls 1 cup videos. Why were they popular, because you wanted to see how long someone could watch and how they would react in the end. Same thing here, just a lot cleaner.

Wow I just compared Minecraft to 2 girls 1 cup. I think that I'll end on that note.

Minecraft - You tease

Ah the joys and pains of minecraft. Some parts of the evening the server was nice to me, other times she was a bitch. Got some pics to upload. The first is our little complex from the outside. My stuff is on the lower left hand side, while Crash lives up in the waterfall. And the other picture, well that is the Nether, or Hell. Crash turned on the nether level and that was where I logged in at. Thanks Crash!!!! Actually he stopped eating dinner to help me back to the normal world so that was cool. Hell, nice place to visit, but I'm not ready to live there.

And we checked out the PC gamer server, now that is some crazy crap right there. Honestly that is too crazy for me. I like the adventure part of the game, that is all crafting. It's neat, but where is the thrill?

In other news I tried to get my server going again, no luck. The trick that I used to get myself going on our server was to restart my computer, seems to have helped out a lot. I was able to feel safe enough to do some cave exploration. Thankfully the zombies were there to remind me that if the lag got a hold of me they would eat my brains. I never saw them, but they were down there. You know what else was down there, a huge vein of iron, we're talking 30 blocks all right next to each other, that is the largest vein I have ever seen of iron. Gives me some high hopes that I might find a large diamond vein... Probably not but I can dream can't I.

Minecraft - To server or sever, that is the question

Didn't get to do much this weekend with my mom in town, but the little bit that I did get wasn't the best. The latency issues that I'm having trying to log onto our server have been death. I'm thinking that I might just go back to playing the single player game for a bit until the network issues get patched a little bit. I don't want to, but it is seriously affecting my enjoyment.

I talked to Crash and he suggested a couple things about getting my server up and going, so I'm going to try that tonight as well, if I can get my own server going that would be good and if nothing else we can test the latency and see if it's the game or the computer that Crash is running it off of. I have a feeling it's the game itself, but it can't hurt to try, who knows.

I also made a last push on the guys about buying the game before it leaves Alpha, don't think that they will, but I wanted to give it a shot. Once the bugs get worked out I could see this being a whole bunch of fun with the couple of us running around building stuff. Ah dreams....

Minecraft - Well it is Alpha

Don't really have time to do a full post today. Crash and I have been having a good time in the multiplayer, even with the lag issues, but hey is only Alpha right. A couple pics from the fun.

Minecraft - Fun Squared

Oh man if that isn't the best pun ever for MC I don't know what is, in fact I'm going to have to use that as the subject later when I e-mail the guys about the intro adventure that my brother and I had last night. Granted it was laggy as hell, but hey it's alpha so what do you expect. But last night showed the awesome potential of what is in front of us. It wasn't simply twice as fun, it was exponentially better (get it fun squared, plus the game is a bunch of squares, har har).

So yesterday we talked about it, we were both going to try and get the server going on our respective machines, but I wasn't expecting to have the time last night myself. Later I get a call from my brother telling me that he needed me to test and see if I could get on, I could, that meant that we were in business.

Later in the evening I jump on, you can already tell that there is some lag, I'll dig out a spot of dirt but the spot doesn't go away, mainly because of the lag not updating. Those problems did persist through the night, which was a downer because it made doing anything pretty tricky. It also caused a problem that ended up killing my brother while we were looking for some zombies, as a note to myself, we need to build a walkway from the spawn point to our mountain homes.

Ok so I spawn and he comes running over to me from across the water, he had already been on doing a little exploration and he had found a mountain with a gigantic waterfall, have to say it was very impressive. I get to work right away mining out some coal and claim the hole as my house, he's like fine, here is mine, and he takes me to a cave that he dug out behind the waterfall, very cool.

From there we both did a little digging in our homes to make them bigger and that's when we both heard the moan of zombies someplace in the mountain with us. I never found them, but I'll have to continue the search next time I'm on so that we can clear out the chamber, I'm actually expecting a spawner in there from the number of moans that we heard.

After that I cleared out the area in front of my house so that it would be safe and did a little exploration, finding a huge cave nearby that will have to be explored. But the lag got pretty bad so I'll have to keep my expectations in check until the next patch. Of course at the end of the night my brother tells me that he has his wow server running on the computer that the MC server is on, not sure but I'm guessing that probably wasn't helping things.

I'm going to wait until the game becomes a little more stable before hitting up the other guys, but I could see this being a lot of fun with the group of us. Exploration would be a blast and raiding a dungeon (especially if the boss mobs are added) would be a blast as one of us would be on look out as we explored. My brother agreed that we can probably get Kerg to join us, but we'll have to break his WoW addiction long enough to do so, Keg would be nice to get, but as my brother said, "Good luck."

Until next time

Minecraft - The mana tree

I'm not sure why I thought of the mana tree from The Secret of Mana over something more obvious like the Elf tree in WoW, I guess it's not quite that big anyway. Either way, seriously, that is a huge tree. I had kind of finished up what I wanted to do with my castle after the last week or so of building it and had this huge room up top that I didn't really have a use for. So I decided that I'd make a little tree farm. I only planted the two saplings that I had on me, just because it wasn't supposed to be a big project, it was just a thing to do for the heck of it. But wow that is a huge tree, it makes my tower look tiny, thankfully I'll never have to worry about wood again. One day when I get bored I might need to burn it down just to see how awesome that looks.

It looks like I'm done with Castle Ick, at least for now. After almost two weeks of construction and messing around I think that I'm ready to move on from the project, it's not perfect, but I need to do something else, I've spent too much time there and I need to do a little exploration.

So in the spirit of exploration I went looking for a new cave to go explore, I wasn't looking for anything serious just something to get my feet wet with. If I wanted to go crazy I knew where the cave was that would be crazy, but I wasn't fully prepared for that yet, plus I'm still kind of a wuss. Changes things when you know there is a price for death, makes it so that you're afraid to die. But I do think it's still the right decision so I'll stay true to my word on it.

So all in all not a lot happened last night, I finished up the castle and am ready to go adventuring again, we'll see where that leads.

Oh I almost forgot, I spent an hour trying to get a server up for my brother and I to play together on. I didn't have any success, but I'll give it another go in the near future.

Minecraft - Frap! I need to get to sleep

Minecraft, I hate you. You keep me up far too late at night as I work out the finer touches on what I'm hoping will be my own personal masterpiece. I hate that you force me to make it perfect, knowing that I will be my only critic, damn you.

Truth be told, I can't hate MC, it's myself that I wish I had more restraint, but alas, there is always just one more thing that I need to do in the damn game, and really I love every second of it. So last night I kept up work on my moat/deathtrap, and I actually kind of got it to work, it's not perfect and it surely isn't automated, but it will kill a mob or two that decide to go for a swim in an effort to breach my walls. But considering that it isn't perfect I have to decide if I'm going to try and prefect the system on the other walls or just give up on the plan altogether. I'm thinking that I'm going to just move on and let it be for now, I've spent the last week building the castle and while I'm happy with the way it came out, it could have been better. Also I want to do a little more exploration underground and see what I can find, but for those trips I'm going to arm my ass up, I'm scared to risk it all down there, but at the same time, I've been a little too much of a wuss and I need to mix it up a little bit.

So I think what I'll do is flush out the remaining area in the Ick cave, torch it up so that it's safe and then get to the digging. I'm not sure how big the system there is, but I have a feeling that it's pretty large. I'll make a set of steel armor and a steel sword or two, along with a pile of arrows and torches. The first trip will be to clear it of as much danger as I can, after that I'll go back and mine it. Ok sounds like a plan, would be fun to watch...

Speaking of watching, I tried to get the fraps going, but wasn't able to upload it to here. I guess that I could put it up on youtube, just as a test. I'm not really planning on doing a Let's Play series, but I think it might be kind of fun too, so I'm exploring the possibility, I'll need to get a mic though, yet again. If nothing else it would be fun to be able to show off my stuff to at least my brother.

Minecraft - My brother

The attached video is from my brother, the quality kind of sucks, but you get the point. I'm just happy that I got him to play it.

Minecraft - Castle Construction

Last night I spent a good deal of time trying to make my castle as cool as can be, but I seemed to keep running into snags, namely the moat. I just can't seem to figure out a good way to make the moat so that it's not more dangerous to me than the mobs. I even considered taking it out altogether, but it just looks so cool that I can't bring myself to doing it. I'll just keep working with it, might go look for some cacti to turn the moat into a mob grinder. I don't really care about the drops, I just want a little peace, might just make another outer wall, that would be one big ass wall.

The tower in the picture is really really high up there and it was pretty nerve racking to build it, one slip and it's back to the start. All the work that I'm putting into the castle has made me wonder if I'll have the stones to stick with my plan and run off in another direction if I die. I guess at the end of the day I could always come back at a later date and finish it if I die, but it's interesting knowing that I could lose it all really quick.

Which brings up an interesting point about playing hardcore, I'm afraid to go exploring in the dungeons. I like the added sense of risk because it's thrilling, but knowing that I don't have to put myself in those situations kind of keeps me from doing it. Oh sure I could go look for diamonds, but I really don't need them when you get down to it. We'll have to see how this plays out, as of now I'll still go with my plan, I think in the long run I'll thank myself for it. The one thing that kills me is that I want to look up my map with the cartographer, but I'm afraid that would give away where I'm living, and make it too easy to cheat in the future.

Anyway enjoy the pics

Minecraft - Just Pics

Didn't play last night but had some pics from the other day that I wanted to get up. One is from my adventure the other day where I had the run in with the Zombie spawner, and the other is my tunnel between the fort and castle, it's really really long. I also got my brother to give the game a go. Not sure what he thought of it, but at least he didn't say, "WTF this is a piece of crap!" So that is a plus =D

If he likes it, then we move on to rope Carl in.

Minecraft - I stand against the night

I was thinking that if anyone read this they would think that it's a Minecraft blog since that's all I write about. It is not, it is my gaming blog, but considering that all I've been playing is Minecraft, that's about all I'm going to write about.

I really need to take more pics and post them, but that takes too long when I could be playing...

Last night I decided that I needed to finish the tunnel between the Ick fort and the Ick castle, and boy is it a long tunnel, it's so long that I can see fog at the end of the tunnel from the tunnel out distancing the draw distance. But it's a safer way to travel that is for sure, plus I think it's a bit faster, wait until I put my rail line in there, then it will be pure awesome, and underground railroad if you will.... hehe.

With some calculation and a bit of counting I punched through to the center of the Ick castle about where I was hoping to come up, problem was, I did it at night. So I had two options; punch through or go all the way around and do it that way. I bit the bullet and punched through at daybreak, thankfully there wasn't anything there to welcome me except for a couple sheep. I marvelled at my accomplishment and felt quite proud of myself, perhaps a bit too long, because night descended on me quickly while I figured out what I was going to do with the opening in the center of my castle that led into the mines underneath my system of caves, that could potentially be bad news. On top of that, I didn't have supplies to make it through the night, I was low on torches to prevent spawns, so I dug in and got to the top of my wall for some defense.

As the night wore on I counted as many as 6 creepers along the outside wall along with a mix of spiders and zombies, thankfully there weren't a lot of skeletons to deal with. Inside 2 creepers spawned along with a skeleton, who eventually found me, he met a quick end from the business end of my rapid fire bow.

When morning finally came I was doing ok, I took a look at the moat system to see why it worked and didn't work, and have decided that I'm going to add a row of glass blocks along the top to see if I can use that to burn away baddies in the morning, although the water will put them out. Humm maybe a deeper pit for them to die in? Either way it looks really cool.

I also went about setting up torches as a last activity for the game night, there must be 100 of them in that place now. By midnight gametime, nothing had spawned internally (except for a freakin farm of animals) so I think that the interior of the Ick castle is now safe for construction, next step, making something kick ass.

I talked to Tony over e-mail last night and was trying to sell him on the game, told him that I'd buy it for him, hell I'd buy it for Carl too if he was interested. I think that it would be kick ass cool for us all to be playing on the same world building up our little empires, just because it's always cool to be able to show off what you built. Regardless though if I'm the only one that sees my little world I'm good with that, it's very satisfying to see the structures that you make. It's kind of like building with legos, but as I told Tony, they are legos that are trying to kill you, so enjoyable.

Minecraft - Into the Darkness

I'm not quite sure why I decided to press on into the darkness last night, but sure enough I went. After all I needed the coal for the number of torches that I'm going to need for the castle, but there seriously are easier ways of getting it. But like a fool I decided that I'd see what was beyond that lavafall and venture deeper into the what I'll call the lava cave (better name to come).



The cave itself branches off in many directions which can really be a pain in the butt when you're trying to cover yourself. I'll head down a corridor a couple meters, toss in a torch so that I'll have at least some spawning buffer before turning back to another corridor and doing the same thing. Problem with that is, the place is crawling with nasties, at one point I came to a ledge where I found 3 creepers, a skeleton, and a zombie. Being cautious I was able to use the ledge as a perch and pick them off with my rapid fire bow (that thing becomes a machine gun when I'm pressed).



With one passageway cleaned out of mobs but I didn't actually go and light up the tunnel because I hate dropping down into darkness and the only other path there went right next to the lava flow so I let it be hoping that any mobs that would come from that direction would get caught in the lava themselves.



The tunnel system itself was very impressive, the main corridor had a huge vaulted ceiling that must have been 10 meters high, which may be a problem with spawns because I can't get a light up there, well I can, but I was hoping that I wouldn't have to. I took the first tunnel that I came to that went to the left into a large wall of rubble and behind the rubble was a whole lot of moaning meaning one thing, zombies. The rubble itself was stacked high, 7 or 8 high in fact making clearing it out a pain, not to mention that there was a clearing above it meaning that I didn't know if I risked having zombies drop on my head if I dug it out incorrectly. Slowly but surely I cleared it away little by little and placed some dirt in the opening to seal off the top. As I went deeper I could hear the moans get louder, they were pissed and there were a lot of them. Finally I broke through and there they were, at least 5 of them all trying to get through to me.



At this point I realized that I was in for a big fight so I was going to need to arm up a little better than I was and go back and make myself an iron sword. I left for my house without event (but man are those caves creepy) fashioned my sword and made my way back down. Problem was, there was a zombie in the area that I thought had already been cleared and secured. How the hell did he get there? Not that he was tough to deal with, but had it been a creeper that I wasn't expecting, oh man that could have been trouble. Even as I write this I'm not sure how he got there, but to be safe I used up some of the precious coal that I had been harvesting and planted another torch in that tunnel hoping that would prevent future spawns. Now it was time to take down that zombie dungeon.



I made my move slowly taking them out one by one as I pressed on, sometimes being attacked by three at a time, thankfully the tunnel to get to me was narrow so I never got overwhelmed. I meleed the close ones and then after the room was cleared, I took out my bow to take out any in the extended passages, then I went to work on the spawner. Useing my sword (probably the wrong tool) I started to beat down that spawner fearful that at any moment another zombie could pop up and attack me. With ferocity I worked until at last the spawner was destroyed, leaving me with a chest full of loot as my reward. Even better the ceiling above the dungeon was made of coal, a double reward that made the whole process even more worth it.



It also turned out that all of the rubble was covering up a rich coal deposit itself. Taking my time to clear out the rubble I filled my backpack with a good helping of coal, it had truly been a rewarding trip into the caves, time to head home...



But on the journey home I was reminded that I'm never safe underground. As I approached the main corridor where the lava pool was, I saw a tall green figure glowing in the light, yep a creeper. The clueless bastard was just minding his own business but I knew what had to be done. I withdrew my bow and fired, hitting the square little frownie right in the chest, once, twice, a total of five times before bringing him down. I knew then that I would never be safe, and that they would always be hunting me.